If two bureaucracies flail at each other on letterhead, do they make a sound? Hey, at least the poor beat reporters show up for those ICA meetings.

At issue appears to be $13 million the ICA is withholding from the city. Who knew? The issue seems to be the city’s lack of cooperation in a nominal agreement to merge its accounting system with Allegheny County’s accounting system as a cost-savings measure. The city wants to instead merge its accounting with the unerring financial wizardry of the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority (PWSA). Maybe I mean sophistry?

Unmentioned is some of the odd story behind the PWSA’s own accounting system. Mentioned here 6 months ago, was some passing news that the PWSA wanted to ditch its use of software from SAP (that would be the largest business software company in the world by the way), for a company with 1/10th of 1% the number of employees, and it seems an even smaller proportion of experience in this market. Beyond the elusive logic of that, remember the city fully supports city-county consolidation.. something that getting some synchronicity between the two governments’ accounting would necessitate.

If the PWSA software does subsume the city’s accounting systems, I just can’t imagine what that Malaysian company will do with parking tickets that get sent out.